Bob Dorf

Bob Dorf is the co-author, with Steve Blank, of The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. He is a serial entrepreneur, founding his first success at age 22 and, since then, six more---"two home runs, two base hits, and three great tax losses," as he puts it. He's advised and/or invested in a score since. Dorf is often called the "midwife of Customer Development," having critiqued early drafts of Blank's The Four Steps to the Epiphany; he and Steve have been friends and colleagues ever since.

Entrepreneurial from his teens, Bob received his last W-2 almost 40 years ago, when he quit his editor's job at New York's WINS radio to launch his first successful startup. In his "spare" time, he teaches "Introduction to Venturing," on Customer development and getting startups right, at Columbia Business School.

Recent posts

While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that 2 in 1000 venture backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation. Another stat... Read more »